Revenge is in the Eye of the Beholder
by RoseApprentice
Summary: I wrote this when I was 14. It's kind of cracked, and very incomplete. Kenshin comes home to the dojo one day, to find that yet another ghost from his past has come back to haunt him. What is it with people and revenge anyway?


Disclaimer: I do not own any Rurouni, let alone one by the name of Kenshin. I do not own Kaoru, Sano, Yahiko, or any other RuroKen characters. I do not own the setting in which this story takes place. I do not own any jokes, plot devices, or ideas that I subconsciously stole in the process of writing this story. Unfortunately, I do own the main character of this story.

Chapter One

In a verse called Uni, there was a galaxy. In that galaxy, there was a solar system. In that solar system, there was a planet known as earth. Surrounding that planet, there was a time stream. Somewhere in that time stream, there was a country known as America; and in that country, due to some rather cruel freedom-of-speech laws, there was a fanfic author who was seriously testing the patience of her already scarce readers.

A few verses over, on the opposite side a very similar planet, and about one hundred forty years earlier, in a time referred to by its inhabitants as the eleventh year of Meiji, our story begins.

It begins with a person thinking the following thoughts: _I am looking at a river. I am walking along a path surrounded by blooming Sakura trees, which I am ignoring; I could be looking in front of me to see where I am going and make sure I don't bump into anyone, and instead I am strolling around looking sideways and down into a river and thinking. What was I thinking about again? Oh yeah, that was it! …thinking. I should really think of something better to think about. I could think about the river. I could think something poetical about how clear it is, and how you can see right down to the bottom, which should turn the water brown, but it doesn't, so it somehow manages to maintain its blue crystally feeling, and about how "crystally" isn't a word, and about how the jutting rocks turn some of the water into ever-changing glass domes, except that a few rocks have stringy green stuff on them that the water seems to cling to, which makes the part of the river that runs over them look like a bunch of little rivers. I could think about how my thoughts always turn into run-on sentences because I think so fast._

_At the moment though, I really feel like thinking about how convenient it is that you can stare at people's reflections in the river without anyone knowing that you are staring at them, because I just could swear I caught a glimpse of what was definitely bright red hair, which could mean that some of the rumors about this town are not just rumors, which would definitely mean that my life-long search is near an end, which would be nice, because I am getting awfully tired of it, and there I go with the run-on sentences again, but I guess it's not too bad, because I always add plenty of commas,_

The author would like to take this opportunity to assure the readers that this story is written in the third person. Now that the author has learned her lesson, the main character will _never_ again be allowed such a long thought monolog again, no matter _how_ much the main character begs.

Kenshin, who was the rather unfortunate owner of the red hair, had no idea that such dark forces were conspiring against him. He simply noticed a slightly strange looking person out of the corner of his eye, and ignored them in his haste to get to the market by noon. If Kenshin managed that, he might have a chance at getting the shopping done by sundown.

The strange looking person in question, who was also the main character, was not so strange looking as one might think. There were black sandals, and white socks. There was a black hakama and a brown gi. There were those odd glove-like thingies that cover one's forearm and are held to the back of the hand by a loop of string around the base of the middle finger; they were black. The character had dark brown hair which was surprisingly difficult to mistake for black. It was tied up with a long, thin piece of black cloth, so it barely reached the base of the neck. The hair along with the gi helped to bring out the main character's eyes, which were also brown. The main character looked to be about sixteen.

Were it not for three things, the main character could easily be a samurai. The first and most obvious was that samurai no longer existed. The second was that rather than a katana and wakasashi tied into the belt of the hakama, there was a boken slung across the back. And finally, the main character of this story was undeniably, inescapably, a girl.

There are many words that have been used to describe Kaoru's cooking. While "tolerable" and "better than nothing" were among them, the words currently going through Yahiko's head were not so tactfully thought out. "Detestable," "nauseating" and "revolting" might have been good examples, had Yahiko been a more literary person. However, as Yahiko was Yahiko, the words going through his head were somewhere along the lines of: "awful," "tastes like crud" and "Uuugghhh…" And naturally, as Yahiko was Yahiko, he could hardly keep such opinions to himself.

"Shut up," Kaoru voiced, holding her boken ominously over his head.

The messy-haired youth relented and backed away, with a parting mutter of, "I was just telling the truth."

To top it all off, Sano was Sano. "Hey, Jo-chan! Just stopped by to say 'Hi.' What's for lunch? By the way, can I borrow some dough? Me an' a few buddies are going gamblin' in a hour, an' I'm kinda short on-" Sometime during the last statement, the ex-gangster had stuffed a large amount of rice in his mouth and was now experiencing the consequences. He immediately began spitting the food out onto the ground, and continued to do so until he could finally manage to choke out, "Awful!" He lifted up his head to wrinkle his nose at Kaoru. "Uugh, did you make this! It tastes like-"

"Enough!" Kaoru was fuming.

The main character, whom the author is relieved to be able to refer to as "she," was wearing a rather evil smile. Now that her quarry was out of ki-sensing range, she could allow her thoughts to run wild with plotting and planning and scheming. _I wonder how I can be doing so much plotting, planning and scheming when I already have a plan, and a pretty simple plan at that._ (Quiet, you!) The main character was scheming because it was fun.

It was then that she noticed that she was very, very hungry. She had heard of a popular restaurant in this town, and decided that such a busy place would be perfect for overhearing rumors about Battosai. If she was right in believing he was the man she had seen at the river, she would need to gather information. Unfortunately, she soon discovered that a slightly aggravated power of fate had deigned her nearly out of pocket-money. She sighed and kept walking, hoping she would soon come across a cheap soba stand.

By this time Sano had already made his getaway, claiming that, like he had said, he was going gambling in a few minutes. Kaoru had beaten Yahiko into the ground for his own, rather ruder version of, "I told you so," which did not bear repeating.

"Oh, come _on,_" she huffed, "It's no worse than the food I make every day, and you should be _thanking_ me for-"

"It _is_ worse."

"Is not!" To prove her point, she popped a huge chunk of rice in her mouth.

…and promptly turned green.

Once Kaoru regained her composure, she gave a defeated sigh. "Fine," she stated bitterly, gathering up what she had believed until recently to be food. "We'll go out for lunch today."

"Hurray!" Yahiko cried, jumping up with his fist in the air. "Akabeko here we come!"

"I didn't say anything about the Akabeko," she retorted.

"Wha-"

"We can't afford it right now, and besides, we're not going anywhere nice without Kenshin. Just some soba and you only get one bowl."

"But-"

"And," she continued with an evil glint in her eye, "we are not leaving until you have done five hundred strokes with the shinai."

Yahiko groaned. "But I'll be _starving_ after that!"

It took the main character over two hours to find a soba stand. She had stopped quite a few people to ask where to go, but their directions were all vague and confusing. One little boy had gone so far as to say that if she found peace within herself, petty things like

directions would no longer matter. On top of it all, she could not shake the feeling that some literary force was plotting against her.

When she got there, there were two people already sitting on the bench, bowls placed on the counter in front of them. One was a woman in a faded kimono, holding a boken. She was eating her soba slowly, clearly feigning great enjoyment in order to induce jealousy in the other occupant, a young boy who had already finished his, and still looked extremely hungry. He had a shinai strapped to his back, and appeared just about ready to use it. What surprised the main character was the fact that he actually did. In response the woman grew cartoon-fangs in her rage, and gave him a solid thwack on the head with her boken. Apparently, they knew each other.

The main character's stomach growled and she remembered why she was there. The bench looked as though it had remained in that same spot out in the open for quite a few winters, and a wary hand was run over it to test for splinters before the main character sat down next to the woman (who had returned to her meal). She ordered her own lunch and immediately scarfed it down then, after recounting her money, ordered another bowl.

The other woman glared at her. "You're not setting a very good example for Yahiko."

Most people in this situation would have made a cruel or sarcastic remark and kept eating like nothing had happened, but something about the unconscious body of a ten-year-old boy at the other end of the bench told the main character that this was not the thing to do. She quickly apologized and was careful to eat her second bowl in small bites and chew twenty-five times before swallowing.

The main character sensed angry ki before she heard the commotion from a nearby restaurant. There were raised voices (drunk voices, too, it seemed), then the sound of something breaking, and the inevitable call of, "Take it outside!" _Honestly, can't there be just one drunken fight that doesn't follow the same old cliché!_

A surprisingly large number drunken thugs with bokens that were clearly concealed swords filed out, followed by a young man who was holding a shinai as if he had never seen one before. Though he did not appear drunk, he was having trouble forming coherent words. "N-n-n-neve-ever sh-show your-r f-faces at my-y f-f-father's restaur-res-restaurant ag-gain or I'll-I'll-I…um…" he trailed off in fear as all the thugs drew their swords, but he held his ground.

The main character could sense in the man's ki that he was not frozen in fear, but was actually refusing to back down. That impressed her. "Hey," she called, getting up and drawing her boken, "You don't mind being saved by a girl, do you?" The man opened his mouth, but no sound came out. "I'll take that as an 'OK.'" She walked over to the scene, where a crowd was quickly gathering, and placed herself between the thugs and the now scared _and_ embarrassed young man.

She blinked. The two people from the soba stand were standing beside her, weapons in hand and determined looks on their faces. "Um, what are you doing?"

"We're helping!" the woman responded enthusiastically.

"We couldn't just stand by and watch this happen, after all," the boy added.

The two clearly knew how to hold a shinai, at least. More importantly, she really didn't want to end up on the wrong end of that woman's boken. "Alright," she complied, "but if you're going to fight on my side, I have to know your names."

"Kamiya Kaoru."

"Myojin Yahiko."

The main character realized then that this meant had to give her own name. "I am called Makoto Heiwaaku, because I am wise, yet dark and sinister." She hunched over and rubbed her hands together in what she appeared to think was a sinister manner. "But my friends call me Walk." She straightened up and began strutting back and forth cheerfully to demonstrate.

The pause that seemed awkward to everyone but Walk was interrupted with a cry of, "Kill them!" and three of the drunken thugs rushing toward them. Walk stopped the first man with a head on clash between sword and boken. This was strange, because usually when that happened, the boken was sliced cleanly in half. In this case, the sword hitting the boken came away with a large crack in the blade.

"That's right folks!" she began, immediately taking on the persona of a saleswoman, "It's reinforced with genuine folded carbon steel. And, the circular folding makes it as strong and durable as a_ real_ sword, even though it's thin enough not to weigh down your boken enough to impede your style _or_ make it lethal. As an added bonus, this product is _completely _unsharpened, making it perfectly legal!"

Yahiko sweatdropped. Kaoru had, by then, finished rummaging through her sleeve for her money bag, and was simultaneously counting up her savings and craning her ear for the asking price. She visibly drooped when she heard it.

"…And, with the addition of a _mere _two yen-"

Walk was cut off by Yahiko's bemused inquiry of, "Weren't we in the middle of a fight with these losers!"

Walk smiled knowingly. "Yes, but you forget that this is the Meiji Era, where fights consist mostly of blabbering on about one's superior skills and unrealistically modern weapons, and where they always forget to take into account the power of distraction." She gestured toward the thugs to which Yahiko had been referring, and suddenly, everyone there noticed that most of them were lying on the ground with some rather severe bruises, and a few broken bones.

"Cheer up," she comforted, patting Kaoru on the head. "There's a significant discount for not being my enemy."

"Would you stop fooling around and fight us?" the leader of the thugs demanded. This may have been a slight tactical indiscretion, as only two of his companions were still standing. The two thugs charged, swords raised, while Kaoru and Yahiko took on defensive stances. Walk dodged around them and ran forward coming face to face with the leader. Though his mental facilities were equivalent to those of a _really_ stupid doorknob, she could tell by his stance that he was actually a much better swordsman than his companions. They exchanged a few blows, to get the feel of each other's techniques, while he ranted about her inferiority. Kaoru and Yahiko had each finished off their opponents, and were watching interestedly, while trying to figure out whether Walk needed help.

Walk didn't think she needed to give away her actual swordstyle to beat him, but deciding that overestimating was better than under estimating, she promptly disappeared. Most people were wondering, for the split second that she was out of sight, where she was. Kaoru and Yahiko, who were used to Kenshin's fighting style, instinctively looked up. They saw Walk, holding her boken above her, point down while using her hands to force the handle of the boken to vibrate in a strange way. She then plunged her boken into her opponent's right shoulder, breaking several bones at once. Fortunately for him, the point of the boken was rounded.

There was an eerie silence as Walk landed and strapped her boken to her back. She turned to face the crowd and asked solemnly, "Do I have any buyers?" Some of the crowd surged forward to place orders for new bokens, but most went back to whatever it was they were doing when the fight started. Walk hurried to write down names and addresses.

Once the crowd had completely dispersed, she turned to Kaoru and Yahiko, who were still wearing shocked expressions. "I'm sorry," she stated. "I guess I should have let you help more."

"You…uuh…that's ok…" was all Kaoru could manage.

Yahiko finally broke free of his reverie and shouted, "That was _awesome_! Can you teach me to do it? Pleeeeaaasssee?"

"Yahiko!" Kaoru shrieked. "You're _my_ student! You can't just-"

"Sorry," Walk cut in, "but this is the kind of style that I can't teach unless you become my apprentice, and you already have a sensei. Besides," she added, "I haven't mastered it yet."

"That's sooo cool!" Yahiko exclaimed. "You're just like Kenshin!"

"Kenshin? Who's Ken-?" Walk was interrupted by a loud chiming.

Kaoru jumped. "Oh, right. It's 2:00 already. We should get going."

"Yah," Walk agreed. "I have to find a place to stay." She glanced down at her very empty wallet. "I don't suppose they take credit anywhere?"

"No," Kaoru answered, "but you could stay with me. I own a dojo, so there's plenty of room."

"Wow! Thanks!"

And so, they all skipped merrily back to the dojo and lived happily ever after.

NOT!

If I get a review that isn't a flame, I might actually update this. Flames, however, are welcome. Just review. Please. Without reviews, my inspiration withers and dies…

…and turns into something that looks suspiciously like rotting egg, but might just be a mint chocolate-chip ice cream cone that someone dropped and just left there…

Oh no. It's happening already. Just click the "submit review" button, and stop the madness!


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